Government is to spend 6trillion Naira. That is Nine hundred and Ninety-Nine billion in six places. Out of which Fashola alone is to spend 1.2 trillion. That is Nine hundred and Ninety-Nine billion Naira plus an additional Two hundred and Sixty Billion Naira in twelve months.

Now after twelve months somebody would come and tell me Fashola is a performer. Ojebi !

Assignment: How would you spend One Billion, Six Hundred Million Naira in a Local Government of your choice?

How the money would come is not really their problem, because the oil companies would just dig oil from the ground and sell. Then give government their share. If the money won’t reach the 6 trillion they plan to spend, they will go to CBN to print the balance or they borrow it.

Shebi all of us is the owner of government, let government start by spending all the entire 6 trillion on Made in Nigeria goods. From furniture to ipad to presidential bed. If we don’t have Made in Nigeria ipad, they should give our university lecturers the money to produce our own Made in Nigeria ipad.

After government does this for 2 years, then we the citizens can then be asked to join government in buying Made in Nigeria, because by then, after spending 12 trillion naira, Made in Nigeria goods would truly be in existence.

Because the importer that was importing furniture, would have seen the handwriting on the wall. He would not want to miss out on sales to government, hence he too would have set up his furniture factory.

This way, the importer would not sack anybody, rather he would employ more people.

Nigerians would have seen that truly Made in Nigeria exists and works. Hence when you say buy local, you won’t be speaking Spanish. You won’t even need to tell us before we learn to patronise our own brothers and sisters.

At the end of the day it is not agidi, we operate a Capitalist System and all systems have rules. Capitalism assumes everyone would be Rational with some level of greed, or call it desire.

All the Leader needs to do is to “telly guide” this rational thinking, to achieve the common goal.

Note: This write up is to open up some emotionally closed minds.

This write-up assumes all government spending is mostly capital. Or all government employees are also Made in Nigeria.

Father of Modern MacroEconomics had this to say about the #LongRun.

“In the Long-Run, we are all dead” … John Maynard Keynes.

Me I want to enjoy Nigeria, I want my parents to enjoy Nigeria, as for my children, they would sort themselves.

Everyone is clamoring self-employment and SME. Our young graduates need at a least one laptop to be productive either in paid employment or on their own. The entry level laptop price just moved from 50k to 90k …picture how many youths we have further increased their hurdle of acquiring their 1st laptop.

Its taken more than six months for this post to come, and now it has come, it is on a very emotional and topical issue on the entity called Nigeria.

First, I must state that at 50 there’s not much to jubilate about, but we must jubilate and jubilate we must. I remember when I clocked 18 and also when I clocked 21, I did not only jubilate, I celebrated it, not because I had achievements to show, but because it is a tradition to celebrate such milestones.

The Idea

A lot of us carry the tag Nigerian yet aren’t proud of the entity called Nigeria, not because we are ingrates but largely due to a failure of leadership and mismanagement of the Nigerian economy. For some time now, I have nurtured the idea of dissociating myself from the geographical entity called Nigeria and rather claim to be a citizen of the World (the geographical entity where the Almighty has created me). This idea has not progressed beyond that level because of the many man-made structures and barriers standing in its part.

Now I resolve to keep that idea in the cooler till a much later time when it becomes feasible to translate it into reality.

The Substitute

The very foundation structure of the entity called Nigeria is the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, dated 1999.

The constitution determines how the president and other leaders of the country/economy emerges so it’s in our best interest (a better Nigeria for us all) to play by the rules. When we have problems the solution, we all know is not to siddon look but rather take concrete steps towards its resolution.

To stand a chance of occupying any of these leadership roles, you have to belong to a Party, emerge as the candidate of that Party for the general elections and then be elected by the entire populace at the general elections.

There are two ways to go about making this change we desire, one is ensuring that the right people get there, and the other is to volunteer your good self for service of our father land. Whichever way you choose to go about it, you have to belong to a political party (card carrying member), and join in the change process.

I have made it a personal duty not to listen to rantings about the problems of this nation anymore,without first asking the ranter if he or she belongs to a registered political party.

Happiness i would say is the essence of life. while we strive to achieve this objective, we adopt various indirect means (i’m not sure if there exist direct means).

Continuous Progress seems to be the one way i found to achieve this essence. In other to achieve CP, one would have to set Goals and continuous work at achieving them. The skills involved in goal setting are not hard to acquire, but if CP is the underlying objective, then it would be advisable to set relatively easily achievable goals of relatively short horizons.

Thinking through this idea, daily & hourly goals seem to be of great importance.

I found this interesting article by Richard Fenton, and i knew i had to share it. It has not only helped me in better understanding failure, it has helped me in truly overcoming procrastination. i hope you find it useful.

5 Secrets of Turning Failure Into Success

1) Change your mental model of “success” and “failure”.Most people operate with the following mental model: SUCCESS <== <== YOU ==> ==> FAILUREThey see themselves in the middle, with success on one end and failure on the other. They do everything they can to move toward success and away from failure. But, what if the model were reconfigured? YOU ==> ==> FAILURE ==> ==> SUCCESSWhat if, rather than seeing failure as something to be avoided it became a “stepping-stone” on the path to success? In other words: Success is the destination. Failure is how you get there. To achieve significant success in today’s world, failure is not just a possibility.it is a requirement. We must see success and failure for what they truly are: not opposites, but opposite sides of the same coin.

2) Intentionally increase your failure rateIf it’s true that the more we fail, the more we succeed (and it is), then the immediate goal should be to intentionally increase your failure rate! Yes, this is a counter-intuitive, reverse thinking philosophy. but it works! In this way, we are succeeding even when we fail (as illustrated by this interaction between a student and Zen Master): Student: Master, if one attempts to fail and succeeds, is he a failure or a success? Master: Yes! Exactly! Intentionally increasing failure is the basis for the "Go for No" concept. "Go for No" means the more people that tell you "no" the closer you will get to ultimate success – or in other words, "yes." Most people, if they actually counted the number of times they hear “no” during a typical day or week (which we recommend they do) would be shocked to see how low the number actually is. We recommend that to create a greater “NO-awareness” carrying a small pocket counter or note pad to track their noes.

3) Set “No” goalsEveryone sets success goals; few people set no goal. And that is what we suggest. But how about setting goals for the number of times we fail? For example, rather than a salesperson setting the goal of having 2 prospects say “yes” to them, they set the goal of being turned down (hearing “no”) 10 times. Imagine the first two prospects they called on said, “Yes!” Rather than being done (having hit their “yes” goal) they’d actually be behind because they still have 10 noes to go! The other exciting aspect of this strategy is how it keeps people “in the game” when they’re “hot!” If all you have is yes goals and you slow down (or quit) when you’re successful, then the hot streak ends. But if you keep going when the yeses of life are falling at your feet, the sky is the limit!

4) Celebrate your failures, not just your successes.It’s natural to be excited about our successes and to celebrate them, to give ourselves a reward or even throw a party. But, if the key to success is to increase our failures, then it only makes sense to celebrate our set backs as well. Yes, you heard right: if someone turns you down, celebrate it! When’s the last time you rewarded yourself for failing? Probably never! Instead of mentally punishing yourself for not succeeding, what if you bought yourself an ice cream cone and said, “I’m one step closer to success!” Maybe failure would stop having the negative hold it has on your thoughts and emotions.

5) See courage as a “muscle”If failure is vehicle that that can take you to success, then courage is the fuel! Most people, however, think that courage is something you’ve either got or you don’t; they don’t see it as a skill that can be developed and process to be mastered. But that’s exactly what it is. Courage is a muscle. And, like any muscle, it must be exercised to be developed and strengthened. As the saying goes: Use it, or lose it. It’s no different with courage. You use and develop your “courage muscle” by looking fear in the eye and taking action anyway. Every time you take action, the courage muscle gets stronger; every time you fail to take action, it atrophies a little. And before you know it your courage is gone. But It doesn’t have to be that way. All the courage you could ever want or need to achieve every goal you have is already in you, just waiting for you to take action.

So, change your mental models, intentionally increase your failure rate, set “no” goals, celebrate your failures and see courage as a muscle, and you will significantly increase your success rate within a very short period. Do come back to drop a comment or two, on how this article has spurred you to action and helped you in achieving more successes.

As the name suggests, fixed odds betting is ‘fixed’ – you will always know before you place the bet the possible outcomes, and how much you stand to win or lose. Spread betting is very different – you may lose a lot, win a lot, or win or lose a little depending on how accurate your prediction is, it is a case of the more correct you are, the more you win, and the more wrong your prediction is, the more you loose.

Our everyday bets are a good example of Fixed Odds betting e.g. you enter into a bet with a friend that he cannot finish 2 bottles of fanta at a go, if he does, you’ld pay him N1,000 but if he fails he gets to pay you N500. For this example, your odds are fixed at N1,000 which is the amount you stand to loose in the event that you friend wins the bet (it cannot be greater).

However, a Spread Betting version of the above example would be if you promise to pay your friend N300 for every Bottle of fanta he succeeds in finishing after the second bottle. What this means is that the more bottles of fanta your friend downs after the second bottle, the more N300 you would have to pay him. So if your friend succeeds in finishing 6 bottles then you would have to cough-out N1,200 being payment for the 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th bottles.

Spread betting is common place in financial markets but it is increasingly being adopted in sports betting markets too, and carries the potential for much greater rewards, but also involves larger risk than fixed odds betting. The increasingly popular “Online Forex Trading” is a form of Spread Betting. Where you get paid for successfully predicting the direction of the market (currency pairs), such that the more correct you are, the more money you make, however the flip side is where the real risk resides.

There are several ways in which fixed odds may be presented, two of which are most common in sports betting. Odds such as 4/1, called fractional odds, imply that for every one unit staked, four units in addition to the one staked will be returned if the bet wins. Another form of presenting the odds is in decimal format which is more straight forward e.g. 3.52, implies that for every one naira u get three naira fifty-two kobo if your bet wins, so winnings equals Stake multiplied by Odds. If you bet N200 on an event with odds of 2.75, if your prediction is correct, you get N550 (N200 * 2.75) however if you prediction is wrong then you loose your Stake of N200.

There are definite advantages that fixed odds betting possesses over spread betting and vice-versa involving risks and potential earnings. Betting casually is best done at fixed odds, whilst spread betting professionals take preference to the high-risk, but high-reward, alternative.

How many times have you been in a planning meeting that seemed to be going very well…but in the end, never amounted to anything?

Chances are you’ve been caught up in analysis paralysis. In other words, good ideas have been presented, but by the time enough people consider and reconsider the situation, it seems more complex, or not as great an idea as you originally thought. Or, in most cases, a conclusion about how to act is never reached.

But, guess what? There is such as thing as “over-thinking.” In sports, analysis paralysis might keep an athlete from reacting quickly enough. In politics, analysis paralysis might cause a simple issue to be debated for years. And, in business, analysis paralysis can keep business owners from moving forward in some pretty amazing opportunities! To avoid analysis paralysis:

Quickly jot down the pros and cons of an idea.

Make a decision (If an entire group is deciding-take a vote.)

Write out the steps required to follow through.

Assign the steps.

Follow through.

You didn’t become an entrepreneur to become a hesitant decision maker. By following these steps, you will make good, well informed decisions. Some will work out and some won’t. But, at least you won’t miss out on BIG opportunities!

If you find it difficult to be a decisive person, remember this, “The success is not in the decision you make; the success is in HOW you deal with the decision you make.” Make your decision and then go to work to make it the right decision.

Have you ever suffered from analysis paralysis? share your experience and how you overcame the situation.

Explicit Phrase:Lets say you are looking for content about internet marketing. Instead of just typing internet marketing into the Google search box, you will likely be better off searching explicitly for the phrase. To do this, simply enclose the search phrase within double quotes.

Example: "internet marketing"

Exclude Words:Lets say you want to search for content about internet marketing, but you want to exclude any results that contain the term advertising. To do this, simply use the "-" sign in front of the word you want to exclude.

Example Search: internet marketing -advertising

Site Specific Search:Often, you want to search a specific website for content that matches a certain phrase. Even if the site doesn’t support a built-in search feature, you can use Google to search the site for your term. Simply use the "site:somesite.com" modifier.

Example: "internet marketing" site:www.smallbusinesshub.com

Similar Words and Synonyms:Let’s say you are want to include a word in your search, but want to include results that contain similar words or synonyms. To do this, use the "~" in front of the word.

Example: "internet marketing" ~professional

Specific Document Types:If you’re looking to find results that are of a specific type, you can use the modifier "filetype:". For example, you might want to find only PowerPoint presentations related to internet marketing.

Example: "internet marketing" filetype:ppt

This OR That:By default, when you do a search, Google will include all the terms specified in the search. If you are looking for any one of one or more terms to match, then you can use the OR operator. (Note: The OR has to be capitalized).

Example: internet marketing OR advertising

Phone Listing:Let’s say someone calls you on your mobile number and you don’t know how it is. If all you have is a phone number, you can look it up on Google using the phonebook feature.

Example: phonebook:617-555-1212 (note: the provided number does not work – you’ll have to use a real number to get any results).

Area Code Lookup:If all you need to do is to look-up the area code for a phone number, just enter the 3-digit area code and Google will tell you where it’s from.

Example: 617

Numeric Ranges:This is a rarely used, but highly useful tip. Let’s say you want to find results that contain any of a range of numbers. You can do this by using the X..Y modifier (in case this is hard to read, what’s between the X and Y are two periods. This type of search is useful for years (as shown below), prices or anywhere where you want to provide a series of numbers.

Example: president 1940..1950

Stock (Ticker Symbol):Just enter a valid ticker symbol as your search term and Google will give you the current financials and a quick thumb-nail chart for the stock.

Example: GOOG

Calculator:The next time you need to do a quick calculation, instead of bringing up the Calculator applet, you can just type your expression in to Google.

Example: 48512 * 1.02

Word Definitions:If you need to quickly look up the definition of a word or phrase, simply use the "define:" command.

Example: define:plethora

"time in tokyo" or any other major city displays the current local time there.

Currency converter: 100 GBP in USD

if you click a search result and find a dead link or a removed page, go back to the Google search page and click on "cache", you’ll get the content of the page as stored by Google.

Hope of early stock market recovery dimmed further today as the market capitalization of the Nigeria Stock Exchange declined by N48.01 billion or 0.97 percent to close the market at N4,906.65 from N4,954.66 yesterday.

Similarly, the Nigerian bench mark All share index depreciated by 0.97 percent to close at 21,404.75 from 21,614.15 yesterday..

Market patronage in terms of Volume of shares exchanged by investors drop by 1.32 million ordinary shares or 0.35 percent when compared with the position of last trading day. In essence, an aggregate of 371.19 million ordinary shares were traded in 5,941 deals today as against a volume of 372.51 million traded in 4,972 deals in the previous transaction.

Turnover by value was on the upswing as it closeat N2.62 billion; N0.82 billion or 45.56 percent rise as against N1.80 billion worth of stocks traded in the previous trading day

Table 1

Market Statistics

Today

08/09/2009

Previous day

07/09/2009

%

Change

NSE All-

Share Index

21,404.75

21,614.15

-0.97

Total

Deals

5,941

4,972

19.49

Volume

Traded

(M)

371.19

372.51

-0.35

Value

Traded

(N’B)

2.62

1.80

45.56

Turn

Over

Ratio %

0.07

0.08

-12.50

Change Point

Mkt.

Capt.

(N’B)

4,906.65

4,954.66

-0.97

CAP Plc lead the top gainers list again as the stock added N1.32 or 4.96 percent to its share price to close the market at N27.91 from its opening price of N26.59. Glaxosmith Plc came second on the list, having gained N1.02 or 4.92 percent as it opened and closed the day at N20.74 and N21.76 respectively.

Table 2

Stock

Opening

Price

(N:K)

Closing

Price

(N:K)

Absolute Change

(N:K)

% rise

CAP

26.59

27.91

+1.32

4.96

GLAXOSMITH

20.74

21.76

+1.02

4.92

WAPCO

30.00

30.99

+0.99

3.30

CCNN

10.05

10.55

+0.50

4.98

BCC

42.00

42.50

+0.50

1.19

Figure 1

Top 5 Price Gainers

2

On the losers’ chart, UACN Plc lead the table for the day as the company share price declined by N1.84 or 5.00 percent to close the market at N34.96 per share, from it opening price of N36.80. Followed on the Chart was Okomuoil Plc that lost N1.32 or 4.98 percent to close the day at N25.19 per share.

Table 3

Stock

Opening

Price

(N:K)

Closing

Price

(N:K)

Absolute Change

(N:K)

% drop

UACN

36.80

34.96

-1.84

-5.00

OKOMUOIL

26.51

25.19

-1.32

-4.98

UNILEVER

15.99

15.26

-0.74

-4.57

ETI

12.02

11.50

-0.52

-4.33

ASHAKAEM

10.93

10.42

-0.51

-4.67

Figure 2

Top 5 Price Losers

Trading Activities (Sectors/Individuals)

The Banking sector emerges as the top traded Sector today in volume among the 30 listed sectors in the Nigeria Stock Exchange Floor. The sector recorded 231.03 million ordinary shares traded to control 62.24 percent of the aggregate volume of shares traded. The Commercial/Service sector, with 44.28 million ordinary shares, traded trailed behind the Banking sector which represents 11.93 percent of the total volume traded.

Figure 3

Zenith Bank Plc emerges first as themost patronized stock for the day. Investors traded 51.95 million ordinary shares to controlled 22.49 percent of the aggregate volume traded in the Banking Sector and 14.00 percent of the entire market. CourtVille Plc (41.55 million ordinary shares) emerged second position on the list.

Table 4

5 Most Traded Stocks by Volume

Stock

Price

(N: K)

Volume

(M)

ZENITHBANK

10.50

51.95

COURTVILLE

0.68

41.55

UBA

10.68

39.88

ACCESS

5.85

31.54

FIRSTBANK

13.80

25.30

Figure 4

5 Most traded Stocks by Volume

Monetary Policy Rate: 6.00 %

Business News

Term of the day:

GRAY MARKET: An unofficial market where new issues of shares are bought and sold before they become officially available for trading on the stock exchange.